


Blessings

by Philomytha



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Crack, Established Relationship, M/M, Mpreg, birth scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2249781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter does a favour for a fertility goddess, and gets an unexpected favour in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessings

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this conversation on tumblr about Nightingale mpreg](http://pushthequorumbutton.tumblr.com/post/75311046494/im-sorry-but-you-tagged-that-set-of-pics-of-armitage).

The story began, though we didn't know it at the time, when we were called out to a report of a strange disturbance in a garden shed in Islington. Last week the police had been called there to evict a pair of teenagers who had chosen it as a spot where neither set of parents would interrupt their sexual experimentation. Ever since then, according to the elderly owners, they had heard inexplicable sounds of babies crying and people having sex inside the shed. Thorough searching had revealed no speakers or other electronic devices - and the first thing I did when Nightingale and I got there was cast a nice bright werelight to destroy anything that was really well hidden. 

The noises got louder, and I have to say it was a bit of a turn-on. The owners had gone inside and it was just Nightingale and me out there, so I put an arm around his waist. He stiffened, not in a good way, and stepped away from me with a frown. 

"We're on duty, Peter," he murmured. Then he said in a clear voice, "Come out, if you please." 

He extended a hand, and a short, naked woman appeared out of thin air in front of us. She was hugely pregnant, nine months with twins, her hips were wide and her breasts enormous and drooping. She stared at us both in surprise.

"You can see me," she said. "That's good."

"Who are you?" I asked. "And what are you doing here?"

"This is my well. I have been asleep for many years, but there was an offering here and I woke."

Nightingale frowned. "You mean the teenagers caught in flagrante here?"

"Indeed. They invoked me and I woke and blessed them."

"I see," said Nightingale. "I'm afraid you're disturbing the inhabitants. You can't stay here."

"No," she agreed. "The people here are past the age of having children and do not desire them. But I am anchored to the well."

"What well?" I said. "This is a garden shed."

After some discussion it became clear that there had once been a sacred well here, and while the well had long since been filled in and turned into a garden, the goddess remained.

"What if I prise up a rock from the ground here?" I said. "Could you stay anchored to that? And then we could move you to somewhere more suitable."

The goddess indicated that this might be possible.

"But where will you put her?" asked Nightingale. 

I grinned. "She's a fertility goddess, isn't she? How about an IVF clinic? It'd be perfect. Loads of people desperate to get pregnant, lots of devotees and prayers."

"IVF?" said Nightingale blankly. 

"Fertility clinic. Dr Walid will sort it out, I'm sure." He'd sorted out stranger things than taking the rock a fertility goddess was anchored to and leaving it in the nearest fertility clinic. 

"It would be nice," the goddess said, "to have devotees again. Thank you."

Before she vanished, she blessed us. The blessing made us both unexpectedly horny and we ended up pulling the Jag over in a very secluded layby for half an hour before getting on with the rest of our day. But neither of us realised just how literal the rest of her blessing would turn out to be.

* * *

It was only in hindsight, when I put the pieces together, that I remembered that Nightingale had been a bit more short-tempered than normal, and a bit distracted. But it wasn't until two months later when we were out on a shout at the crack of dawn and Nightingale abruptly pulled the Jag over and threw up on the hard shoulder that I asked him if he was okay, and he admitted that he'd been having 'a digestive upset' for the past couple of weeks. We didn't suspect what it really was. I mean, would you?

* * *

It got worse after that, and the next two days Nightingale stayed in bed. Molly started producing copious quantities of bland food, ginger tea and soup. I went up to check on him and found him distinctly unwell. 

"I'm calling Dr Walid," I said.

"It's just a stomach bug," Nightingale protested, but only once. 

Dr Walid came that afternoon, and I sat in on his check-up. 

"I'm not ill," he protested again. "I'm sure it will pass in a day or two."

"I'm a gastroenterologist," Walid said. "Humour me."

Walid's questioning was as unrelenting as any police interrogator, and under the onslaught Nightingale admitted that he'd been feeling queasy most of the time for the past month, that he'd been vomiting daily and that for the past few days he'd been unable to keep anything down at all. I hadn't realised it was that bad, only that he hadn't been remotely interested in sleeping with me since that night after we'd rehomed the fertility goddess. 

Dr Walid asked yet more questions and then said, "I want to run some tests."

"I don't need to go to hospital," Nightingale said. 

"I'm not planning to admit you yet," Walid responded, and then took samples of everything he could get and left Nightingale in peace.

"You should have said how bad you were feeling," I told him when Walid had gone, perching on the side of the bed. "I thought you--" Had stopped liking me. 

"Don't be absurd," he said, and I flopped down on the bed beside him and said nothing for a while.

* * *

Dr Walid returned the next day, and I met him in the hall. He hadn't called, which worried me: doctors call if the result is that everything is boring, and visit in person if there's something complicated or serious going on. "What is it? Is he going to be okay?"

"Ah," said Walid. "Yes. I think." 

"What is it, then?"

"Let's go talk to Thomas. You can stay. You'd better stay." How Walid had worked out what was going on with Nightingale and me I don't know. Maybe Nightingale told him. He doesn't talk to me about it, and I don't talk to him about it, we just kiss and have sex whenever we can get the chance, and I think Nightingale's pretty happy with it. I know I am. 

So I was really worried when we went up. Nightingale did look ill, exhausted and pale and too thin. He sat up and did his best 'I'm perfectly fine' impression when we came in anyway. 

"Well? Has my luck run out at last?" Nightingale said coolly, looking at us both.

"I ran all the standard tests," Walid said, "and something came up. Something I've encountered thousands of times, but never in quite this context. I'd like to examine you, please."

I peered over Walid's shoulder as he examined Nightingale until I caught a frown from him, and turned away. Walid took his time over whatever he was doing, and then got his stethoscope out, and another weird machine I didn't recognise, and ran it over Nightingale. It broadcast a fast heartbeat, and I looked back. Walid was a bit pale himself. 

"Yes," he said slowly. "Er. I'm don't understand it at all, but the urine test, the blood test--it's unmistakeable. I'm pretty sure you're pregnant." 

"Ah," said Nightingale. "That... explains much." He sat up. "That was the, the baby's heartbeat?"

Walid nodded mutely. 

"It sounded healthy," said Nightingale. He seemed oddly at ease. 

"Are you sure--you're okay with this, Thomas?"

He shrugged. "It's not the strangest thing that's happened to me."

I stared at him, and so did Dr Walid. "It's not?" we said in unison.

* * *

It turned out from the ultrasound and a more detailed examination that Nightingale had apparently acquired a whole new set of organs, including a vagina. Apparently he hadn't noticed, since having been born before Philip Larkin and the Beatles invented sex, he wasn't in the habit of worrying about his genitalia and then he was feeling too ill to think about it. And since that night with the fertility goddess in the shed we hadn't slept together, so I hadn't noticed either. 

Which is how we figured out what had happened, though I have to say that the only explanation Walid could come up with for precisely how us having sex could result in a conception was 'it is magic, you know, Peter, it doesn't have to make sense'. I thought that was a total cop-out. 

The next day I went to visit the goddess.

"Er," I said, not sure how to attract her attention, "ma'am, can I talk to you?" I checked nobody else was around, then conjured a werelight to attract her attention. "Something strange has happened."

"Yes," she said once I'd explained. "I bestowed my blessings upon you both. You need not fear, there will be a fine child and no deaths in childbed."

Which gave me a whole new thing to worry about. I spent the rest of the evening on Google researching maternal mortality rates, and wondering whether any of it applied to Nightingale.

* * *

"So you have, um, everything now?" I said, perching on the edge of Nightingale's armchair in a way that always annoyed him. 

"I believe so." 

"We should try it out." 

"I feel it would be interesting to explore all aspects of the situation," said Nightingale softly, which was Nightingale-speak for _please take me now_. 

We explored all aspects of the situation very thoroughly indeed. It took several hours. 

"I'm _so_ glad you're not feeling sick any longer," I said.

* * *

I was worried about the first appointment with the midwife, but it turned out Dr Walid had recommended a good one, a stout middle-aged woman with eyes that reminded me of the fertility goddess's. 

"Don't worry, I've dealt with similar cases before," she said kindly to Nightingale. 

He stared at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"If you let me know how you prefer me to refer to you, that's no problem at all." 

I tried to decide whether it would be harder to explain the concept of transgender people and pregnancy to Nightingale, or the idea that Nightingale was a man who had recently grown a uterus and conceived a baby due to the magical blessings of a fertility goddess to the midwife. 

"Please call me Inspector Nightingale," he said at last.

* * *

It wasn't until about six months into the pregnancy that Dr Walid started asking us about how we were going to look after the baby, and our long-term plans. I'd been trying not to think about it, and Nightingale hadn't been talking about it. 

"Molly is very capable--" Nightingale started.

"It's the twenty-first century," I said. "You don't leave babies to be raised by the servants any more. But--yeah. I don't know--" I paused, trying to find a way to say the rest of what I was thinking. Nightingale and me, we didn't talk about what we were doing. We have some really hot sex and we sometimes spoon together at night and deal with each other's nightmares and we work cases together and eat meals together, but it wasn't like I'd imagined settling down with--well, with anyone. I didn't intend to marry him. 

At least, not any more married than we were already. 

"You've another eight years as my apprentice," Nightingale said, as if he'd been reading my mind. "That's a good start for any child. After that... well. We can cross that bridge when we come to it."

Which just left me with the problem of how to explain to my parents where their first grandchild had come from.

* * *

New Year's Eve, Trafalgar Square: it's the place to be. It's also the place to be if you're police, of the magical or regular flavour. Nightingale, despite everyone's repeated attempts to make him stick to desk work, was out patrolling with me, though he was staying well back. We'd established, after much research and conversation with Dr Walid, that it wasn't immediately dangerous to use magic during pregnancy, but Dr Walid had limited Nightingale to an hour per day, and he had to have his blood pressure checked twice a week. 

The fireworks were fun, the crowds were mostly in a good mood and there were no disturbances of either a magical or non-magical nature nearby. I worked my way around, and looked around suddenly at a flash of vestigia about twenty feet away through the crowd. 

It wasn't immediately obvious what the cause was. I went through the crowd and the sense of magic got stronger, a hot dry wind and rustling leaves. I looked up at the lion on its plinth and gaped. Its tail was twitching. There were about six teenagers sitting on its back, and more on the plinth, taking photos of each other and yelling. The lion's head lowered, and they began to react, mostly switching their phones to video it with the kind of disregard for safety or common sense that keeps the London Ambulance Service busy every day. The lion opened its mouth. 

Have you ever heard a lion roar, up close? It's not like it is on nature documentaries. There are extra harmonics up close which send a message straight down your spinal cord, and the message is: run or you're lunch. Heads were turning all over the crowd now, and the kids on the lion were finally starting to realise that maybe this wasn't the best place to be. The lion crouched down. 

"Everyone move away, please, move away," I shouted in my best crowd-control voice. "Move away from the lion, please." It wasn't, a slightly hysterical part of my brain noticed, an instruction I'd ever had to give a crowd before. Fortunately they didn't need telling twice.

The lion flicked its tail, yawned, and jumped down from the plinth. Someone screamed. I moved sideways, between the lion and the crowd, because when you're police you've got to do these things even though you really don't want to. I made the _impello palma_ forma to create a shield between us, but had no idea what to do next. It's not like a fireball was going to have much impact on a stone lion, and I didn't know how to get it to go back. 

The lion sniffed at my invisible shield, licked its stone lips with a stone tongue, and sprang sideways. That's the trouble with the shield: it's easy to go around. I started to line up my next forma, an _impello_ to hopefully pick the lion up and stick it back on its plinth. I swear the lion laughed at me.

Then from behind me I felt a very familiar _signare_ , and turned. 

Nightingale was breasting the crowd like a tall ship coming in to harbour, warrant card in one hand, staff in the other. He swung to a halt a few steps away, and his staff tapped lightly on the pavement. 

The lion froze. Then, head down, it turned around and jumped back onto the plinth, for all the world like Toby when he's been caught stealing sausages. Nightingale took three deliberate steps forwards, and the lion moved into its original statuesque position. Another tap of his cane on the pavement, which seemed to echo loudly around the square, and the lion was back to the usual lifeless stone. 

Nightingale gave a little smile with just a hint of smugness to it. "Haven't lost my touch," he said, just loud enough for me to hear. One hand moved to curve gently over the bump. 

It was possibly the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. And I had four more hours of patrolling to do before we could go home.

* * *

Maternity clothes were a real problem. Being lean and slim, he showed. A lot.

"I really cannot go to my tailor like this," he said.

"You're not going to be able to hide the baby," I pointed out. "It'll need clothes."

"It won't need a hand-tailored suit from Dege & Skinner. Not for some time." 

We went to John Lewis's maternity department, which was a resounding failure. "The pockets," he complained when he tried on a pair of plain black work maternity trousers. "They're impossible." 

He was right. We bought a few of the least objectionable items, but when we returned to the Folly I saw Nightingale talking earnestly to Molly about how to alter some of his regular clothes to accommodate his new dimensions. She managed this, as unfazed as ever, and Nightingale's standards of dress slipped only towards the end of the nine months when even he was forced to admit that the maternity trousers, inadequate pockets and all, were more comfortable than Molly's altered ones.

* * *

"Someone gave me their seat on the Underground today," Nightingale informed me in a somewhat bewildered tone over supper.

"And they say Londoners are rude and thoughtless," I said. 

"It was a woman." He shook his head. "I didn't take it."

"Do you really want a repeat of what happened two months ago?"

"I didn't faint then," he protested. "I just felt a bit lightheaded for a moment. It was very hot."

He had, in fact, fainted emphatically enough that six of his fellow passengers had independently called 999. Sergeant Kumar had taken charge and then sent for me, his attitude somewhere between amused and anxious. Dr Walid had been unimpressed and advised Nightingale not to put on three heavy wool layers before travelling on the Tube on an unseasonally hot October day and to refrain from skipping breakfast. 

"You're eight months pregnant," I said. "Next time, accept."

* * *

The midwife had reassured us that first labours were slow and there would be plenty of time to contact her and come in to hospital. In fact, she urged Nightingale to wait as long as possible before contacting anyone, because there was no point coming in to hospital too soon. In hindsight, that was a really unwise thing to tell someone who would easily win the England All-Comers Stiff Upper Lip contest.

And nobody mentioned to Nightingale that labour could feel a lot like backache at first. I think I'd read about it, but since Nightingale never mentioned any personal discomforts to me, there wasn't anything I could have done differently, and I just thought he was unusually short-tempered that day. Perhaps I should have noticed when he spent the night pacing around the Folly in his dressing-gown, but he hadn't been sleeping well for weeks and I was knackered.

So I only woke up when I heard a noise that I thought was the heating pipes groaning. There was a light on in the bathroom, and I could see Nightingale stooped over the sink. He turned his head slightly, and I saw his face. 

I've never got out of bed so fast. 

"You're in labour," I said, a bit more angrily than I really meant to. "How long has this been going on?"

He barely acknowledged my presence, just a slight tilt of his head to see me. His eyes were glazed, his lips set. I wasn't sure he could speak at all. But the contraction ended and he straightened up and turned to face me.

"I don't think it's been very long... what time is it? I was going to wake you if it didn't stop." He sounded disturbingly vague. 

"If it didn't stop?" I said incredulously. "It's quarter past three. When did it start?"

"As late as that? Oh. Eleven, maybe." Which explained a lot. His breathing shortened again and he bent over the sink again. One hand grabbed my arm and held on. But he made no sound apart from his rough breathing, though I nearly squeaked as his fingers bit into my forearm.

I'd done my first-aid course and I had a very bad feeling about this. I didn't think more than a minute had passed since the last contraction had ended, and they were easily a minute long. I was glad I had my mobile in my pocket already, because I didn't think I'd be able to get my arm free from his grip. 

The midwife who took my call was very professional and reassuring as I described what was going on. "We'll send someone out to you, and an ambulance," she said. "Don't worry, first babies aren't usually that quick." But her professional voice became rather strained when Nightingale had the next contraction, which seemed to go on for ever, his whole body rigid with effort. At the end he slid to his knees and then lay down on the tiled floor as if completely exhausted. 

Following the midwife's instructions, I tried to look to see how far along he was, and that was when my worry slipped to full-grown panic, because I could see a lot of black hair that didn't belong to Nightingale. In fact, it looked a lot like my hair. My mum was going to be so pissed off about that, I had time to think, and then Nightingale began another contraction. The baby's head distinctly moved. I told the midwife, my voice squeaking a little. 

Nightingale looked up at me then, and gave me a glare I recognised. A time-to-stop-slacking-and-get-to-work glare. Since he was also engaged in pushing a baby out, it had a whole lot more force behind it than usual. Now the great British public spent a fair bit of taxpayers' money on training me to be calm and practical in emergencies, and that bit of my brain finally woke up and kicked into high gear. 

"You're going to be fine," I heard myself saying in a very convincing tone of voice. "It's all going really well."

The horrifying thing was that he looked reassured. I followed the midwife's directions about warm towels and tried to get Nightingale to have a few sips of water before the next contraction hit. When it did, it was another endless one, and for the first time Nightingale made a noise, a long low-pitched groan that made the midwife on the phone say, "Not long now," in a voice of experience. 

Then the baby's head came out. Now I'd always assumed babies were born all in one go, so my cool slipped a bit at the fact that the contraction ended with the baby half in and half out, but the midwife seemed to think this was okay. Nightingale, now swearing rhythmically under his breath, didn't agree. 

"Be ready on the next contraction," she said. "All you have to do now is not drop the baby. We'll have help with you very soon now."

I didn't drop the baby, though it was a near thing. On the next contraction it shot out in a gush of blood and amniotic fluid like the cork from a well-shaken bottle of champagne. I caught it and stared wildly. The baby was purple and brown, bloody, misshapen and unreal-looking. Then she kicked her legs and let out a wail, and I could feel the midwife's relief from here. 

"Excellent," she said. "Leave the cord alone, just don't let the baby get cold."

Nightingale was staring up at us with eyes that seemed huge in his pale face, and I said shakily, "It's a girl. Look. Look." 

That was when there was a storm of footsteps on the stairs and Molly ushered in the paramedic and the midwife who'd come out with the ambulance. I found myself oddly reluctant to let go of the baby, even so that I could help Nightingale. The midwife and paramedic checked them both, and then gave me a pair of sterile scissors. I looked at them blankly.

"Go on, then," said the midwife, and I cut the cord. 

I was feeling really strange all of a sudden, and I sat down on the floor by Nightingale's head, still gripping the baby. He gestured to me, face pale and sweaty and transfigured, and I gave him the baby. My chest was tingling, and not in a metaphysical way either. More like in a way that suggested something seriously weird was happening. 

"Er," said the midwife who was attending to whatever was happening at the other end. "This isn't--"

There was another set of footsteps, and Dr Walid hurried in. He looked around and gave the biggest smile I've ever seen. "Wow. You don't do things by halves, do you," he said, then introduced himself for the benefit of the midwife and paramedic. "How is he?"

The midwife gave him a look that suggested she didn't think a gastroenterologist was the help she required. "The placenta was delivered two minutes ago, and he was bleeding a fair bit," she said, "with a grade two tear, and then it just... it's all disappeared."

"The blood?" said Walid. "No--" There was quite a lot of blood on the floor, which I didn't really like to look at. After the number of crime scenes and road accidents I've seen, I know a fairly small amount of blood can cover a terrifying area, but it's different when it's your partner's. 

"No. Everything." She ran her hands over where the bump had been, pressing down hard enough to make Nightingale grimace, and shook her head. "I can't feel anything. It's contracted right down, more than ought to be possible. And everything else is gone too."

"The spell's over," said Walid. "Was the placenta intact?"

The midwife checked it over. "Looks fine."

"Then I don't think you need to worry." 

"Um," I said, and Walid looked at me. The tingling in my chest had stopped, but there was something even weirder going on. Two small damp circular patches were forming on my t-shirt. Which was bulging.

Nightingale turned his head to look, and the strangest smile crossed his face. "Well, Peter," he said, "now it looks like you're going to find out what this is like." He passed me the baby. 

The baby's head was turning from side to side, fists jammed in her little mouth. Walid and the midwife were both regarding me with confusion and, in Walid's case, secret amusement. 

"Go on, then, Peter," Nightingale said, "feed your baby."

* * *

The fertility goddess looked very pleased with herself when I returned to her clinic five days later, dazed with sleep deprivation and carrying a baby who insisted on being fed every two hours round the clock. "I've always thought it was unfair that the mother has to do both jobs," she said. "But in your case I managed to split it up. Now it's your turn."

"Um, thanks. I think." 

Nightingale, who'd come with me because I wasn't fit to drive, gave a crooked smile and said, "Turn and turn about, Peter. And you can always stop when you've had enough."

* * *

"It was you who wanted a baby in the first place, wasn't it?" I asked one day. 

Nightingale gave me a funny look. "I assumed it was you. Since you were the one who dealt with the goddess. She was granting your private wish."

"I thought it must be your wish." I frowned at him and wondered whether maybe we should talk to each other more. "You mean you went through with all that because you thought it would make me happy?"

Nightingale regarded my spit-up-stained jumper and hollow eyes pointedly. "You appear to be doing most of the work right now."

"I don't mean I regret any of it," I added quickly. "I just... wondered where the fertility goddess got the idea."

"She's a fertility goddess," said Nightingale. "I don't imagine she needed any encouragement. Two ... lovers ... unable to conceive, and she had a couple of hundred years of stored-up magic to use." He leaned back in the armchair and adjusted Cecily on his shoulder. I held my breath, but she didn't wake up. "I don't regret it either." He paused. "I tracked down the original couple who woke her. We may have got off lightly. They had triplets."


End file.
